Sure we were able to fill our fresh water tank and then dump our waste tanks without even leaving our site. And yes, we were able to take unlimited hot water showers in the bath house. But we still had to run our furnace all night to stay warm and burn through another $7.50 worth of propane.
Why you ask? Because, just after we finished eating dinner last night the power in the entire campground went out. Usually it's only a matter of a few minutes to an hour before someone is able to get it turned back on again, but not this time. No, it was off until about 30-minutes before we pulled out of our campsite to get back on the road this morning.
We have a little sightseeing trip scheduled into our route before we leave Arizona today. Just 28-miles north of the campground is Lake Havasu City and some of you may be aware the original 1830s London Bridge is now located here.
That's right, the same one that was "falling down, falling down" was carefully dismantled and each of the stones was numbered. They were then shipped to California through the Panama Canal before being driven down to Lake Havasu City, where the bridge was just as carefully reconstructed.
From it's purchase in 1967, for just over 2-million dollars, it took four years before it was once again open for vehicular traffic in 1971. The bridge still bears some of the scars from the attack on London during World War II.
After ruminating over the $3.50 I wasted by purchasing gas too soon, we continued on westbound up Interstate 40 for another 65-miles before exiting to take a detour to the town of Amboy, CA.
If you think Amboy sounds familiar to you, it might be because we stopped here once before back in December of 2022 on our way south from visiting Alaska.
Amboy is known for several reasons, but mostly for the Amboy Crater which is formed of ash and cinders, measures 250 feet high and is 1,500 feet in diameter.
but probably won't do so this time around.
Since this property is administered by The Bureau of Land Management they permit overnight parking at this location. When we were here two years ago we had the place to ourselves. This time around there are four other RVers sharing the two parking lots with us.

WEDNESDAY - We woke up this morning and decided to pospone our departure time until 10:00AM, just because we can!
We're headed to a Walmart for tonight that's 170-miles away and there's no reason to arrive too early. Around 9:45AM we started making preperations for our departure.
It's Tricia's job to make the inside of THE POD ready for travel, while I take care of the outside. I'll admit that when we are "boondocking" like we did last night I don't have much to do. With no electrical cords or water hoses to put away, and no awnings to retract, all I really have to do is raise the stabilizers by pushing a button and then raise the front jack and put away the bucket we use under it. Oh yeah, I also turn off the propane tanks, can't forget that!
When we're not "boondocking" I have to deal with the cords and hoses, plus hookup THE POD to ROVER, put away the awnings and possibly the outdoor chairs we've used.
One thing I always do is turn on the TPMS (tire pressure monitoring system) and check all eight of our tire pressures. Our tires are all set to 75PSI and for the last several days we've had one tire that's been below 60PSI each morning. It's not unusual for pressures to be lower when it's cold out, especially if it's below freezing. While the other seven tires have all been between 65-70PSI this one at 60PSI is somehow losing pressure. So we get out our tire inflator and bring up to tolerance before getting on the road each morning.
This morning the same tire was at 30PSI and we felt it was time to change it out and put on our spare. It was 55°F this morning and we were in a nice smooth level asphalt parking lot, so it was the perfect location to change our tire. Plus it was on the sunny side of the trailer and didn't feel nearly as cold.
So 30-minutes later we were on the road. When you visit Amboy Crater you're literally 25-miles from nowhere and we've got a half tank of gas so we're good in that department, but we'll need gas before we to make it the 170-miles to Walmart.
Our first opportunity for gas was in the very small town of Ludlow, CA (pop. 10). It's located just off Exit 50 on Interstate 40 and like all small towns just off an Interstate the gas prices are outrageous. I feel they are that way for several reasons, first is to take advantage of "that guy" who's traveling on the Interstate in the middle of nowhere when his LOW FUEL light comes on. He's got no choice but to pay the price for being so unprepared.
Second, is maybe they have to pay more for the delivery of the gas to a remote area, but I doubt it. Plus with only one or two gas stations in town there's no competition, so they charge what ever they want.
I use the Gas Buddy App to locate the cheapest fuel prices in an area and found that 50-miles further up the Interstate in the much larger town of Barstow, CA (pop. 25,415) the gasoline was 50-70¢ cheaper. But here's where...
Also on Google Maps you can sometimes get prices and comments. This station was reporting gasoline at $3.99 on both Gas Buddy and Google Maps, where I found comments like "this station always has the lowest prices in town".
Also in Gas Buddy you're supposed to report CASH prices and CREDIT prices separately. I filter my Gas Buddy App so that it only shows me CREDIT prices and this station still came up at $3.99 a gallon.
I'll admit it was my fault I paid to much! When I'm towing THE POD through busy surface roads inside of big cities I'm constantly focusing on many things, like traffic, obstacles, first locating the gas station entrance and then how to best maneuver ourselves to be in front of the pump, not so much on the prices posted on their sign.
I've learned that Gas Buddy doesn't always have the correct price and when I saw the big $4.09 on the sign I thought "close enough" to myself and pulled in. When I saw the prices on the pump and then took a good look at the sign out front I should have just pulled away and gone somewhere else, like directly across the street where they sell gas for $4.17 Credit Price. So I overpaid by more than $10 for my fillup by not just pulling away. By the way, there are three other gas stations in Barstow that legitimately advertise $4.09 gasoline, I should have went there instead.
One thing I did do to make myself feel better is once we arrived at Walmart, two hours and 100-miles later, I logged back into Gas Buddy and reported the CORRECT prices in the app. They are no longer the cheapest place in town, as they were before! I'll check it again before we get back on the road tomorrow to see if I need to change them again.
Who said Walmart parking can't be beautiful?

Well we made it to the repair shop and got both of our leaking tires plugged ($40) and then looked across the street where we could park overnight for FREE and saw nothing but a dirt and gravel lot. Half of it was filled with semi-trucks and old broken down trailers.
We decided then to move on up the road another 45-miles and find a Walmart in Fresno (pop. 542,000+) where we could overnight. The first overnight Walmart we stopped at said NO to us overnight parking. The other five Walmarts in Fresno were all on the east side of town and too far from CA-99 to make it worth fighting the traffic to go check out.
I know what you're thinking, why didn't I just call ahead? Well, more than half the time they never pickup the phone and the other half they say they have to go ask a manager and never come back to the phone. That's why most of the time we just show up with our fingers crossed and ask in person at the Customer Service Desk like we did here.
I've found the larger the town, the more likely the answer will be NO.
So we called another Walmart and then drove 18-miles further north on CA-99 to the town of Medera (pop. 66,000+) where the answer was YES.
UPDATE: As of 7:45PM! - We got that dreaded knock on the door, our first, by the Walmart Security Patrol.
He was kind enough to explain that we weren't allowed to park overnight in the Walmart portion of the parking lot. We could however park in front of any of the other NOW CLOSED stores in the same parking lot.
When I said we wouldn't be doing that and instead just move on down the road he mentioned that Lowe's right across the street allowed overnight parking and called them on my behalf.
We moved across the street and I went inside and verified we were permitted to park and find out EXACTLY where in the lot we were to set up.
Even when you try to do everything right it still manages to come out wrong!
After all the extra driving today we are only about 150-miles from our campsite reservation in Sacramento, so we called and booked an extra day and will arrive tomorrow afternoon instead of Saturday. It'll give us an extra day to get ready to leave for Hawaii and THE POD will have an extra day of rest too.
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